Hello all,
I haven't been here in a while. Just thought I would start a thread to discuss my usage of Puppy to turn an old extra laptop I have into a portable digital audio recorder. The idea was to start out with a bare bones distro and add what I needed for recording. The less there is running on the computer the less chance there is of a crash in the middle of a recording. I am familiar with puppy as I played with it some years ago so I decided it would be a good idea.

So far, I have installed Slacko on the hard drive and installed Audacity. I plugged the mixer (Allen & Heath ZED 10) and didn't have to install any drivers. It already worked! Windows 7 recognized the mixer too but it doesn't use the data flow correctly. It treats a line level input as a mic and there is no way to change it. On a side note this feature was available on XP and it was discontinued (of course.)

I'll try to keep this thread updated as to how it all works out! And I'm open to any suggestions on how I can make it more stable and safe. For instance, I changed the temp folder for Audacity to a folder on the hard drive so that if there is a power issue or some other crash during a recording I wouldn't lose everything.

I haven't run the recoding quality through the ringer yet. I need a reliable tone source. Maybe I'll start off by just recording hours of silence and make sure there aren't any pops or other noise.

I'm just using a typical SATA drive.

I'm connecting to the mixer using USB. The mixer's built-in USB chip sends Two channels (L/R) of 16 bit/48khz audio. It can also receive stereo audio through USB or send one channel of audio to the computer while receiving one channel.

Finally figured out how to prevent the computer from suspending with the lid closed (which would be a problem if it happened during a recording.)

I edited /etc/acpi/events/lid-conf to be:

Code:

# This is a based on sample ACPID configuration
# Additional scripts catered specifically for Puppy Linux 4.1.x

event=button/lid*
#action=/etc/acpi/actions/suspend.sh

It didn't work at first because I forgot that since the file was already loaded I would need to restart the computer for the changes to take place. So now the screen goes black when I shut the lid but it does not go into suspension.

I unpacked the driver and just dragged it into /lib/firmware. It had to paste and replace another driver (which I assume is the intel driver that pup was trying to use.) After pasting it I went into wireless setup and it automatically scanned and found all the local hotspots, finally!

Eventually, once my business has paid for itself, I will be getting an external A/D, or audio interface so that I can record 24-bit. For now I consider the business to owe me money for the equipment that I have already purchased. All in all I will need to make around $500 before the business is "out of the hole."

Thank you for the Jack recommendation. I don't know if I will be needing anything like that for now but I will make a note to learn the ends and outs of it so that when I DO need it I already know the pitfalls that might cause problems.

I just finished recording my first gig on Saturday! The Puppy workstation worked like a champ. The only real problem was that I found out that I REALLY need some longer mic cables; we're talking a couple 75 footers! I had to sit way too close to the band. Who knew Bluegrass could hurt your ears!

I have installed puppy and audacity on a different, even older, laptop I have. I'm going to use it as a backup/test workstation. I will attempt to get a full feature DAW working on it before I attempt the same on my main workstation. I will use one of the programs from this thread: http://linuxmusicians.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=11430

Hello,
Look into Studio 13.37.
Realtime kernel and Jack built in.
Audacity, Hydrogen, Rosegarden etc..
Free on this furum.
I use it a lot.._________________Close the Windows, and open your eyes, to a whole new world
I am Lead Dog of the
Puppy Linux Users Group on Facebook
Join us!
Puppy since 2.15CE...

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forumYou cannot attach files in this forumYou can download files in this forum